I finally rewrote the smlc driver script in SML. Interested parties
can look at:
~sweeks/smlc/src/main.sml
~sweeks/smlc/src/popt.{sig,sml}
There is still a shell script, but it basically just calls the NJ
runtime system with the write args -- or, for the self hosting
version, will just call with the right world file.